*********************************
...What distinguishes On Sublimity (Longinus) from its predecessors, however, is the stress its author places on a mode of speech that is indeterminate or without form, a quality that renders the pedagogical aspect of the work extremely problematic. Whilst standard devices such as inventio (the gathering of relevant subject matter), dispositio (the process of composition), elocutio (the use of rhetorical style to suit the occasion), memoria (the putting to memory of the various elements of the discourse), and actio (the delivery or punctuation of speech) could be taught and put into practice before assemblies or tribunals, the sublime seemed to elude definition. Reading On Sublimity, therefore, it is easy to conclude that the author secretly regards his subject as formally unteachable. [note- Nature's Child - NLD]. Longinus' apparent stress on novelty and invention certainly chimed with the aesthetic concerns of his seventeenth century translator, Despreaux Boileau. As Jean-Francois Lyotard comments, for Boileau, ' the sublime cannot be taught...[it] is not linked to rules that can be determined through poetics'. It requires a certain 'je ne sais quoi' to detect the presence of this 'inexplicable' and 'hidden' phenomenon; it takes a 'genius' to master its use (Lyotard 1989:201). Boileau's Baroque emphasis on the novelty and circumstance of sublime discourse continues to influence modern appropriations of his work Thus, the English critic D.A. Russell maintains that while the work is undoubtedly a 'how to' rhetorical manual (Longinus 1964), its emphasis on rote learning is qualified by a fascination with the mysterious influence of genius which 'inspires and possesses our works with a kind of madness and divine spirit' (Longinus 1965:9). Again, the sublime is something that the elevated individual instinctively knows; one does not learn the sublime; one catches it, like a divine contagion. (The Sublime, Philip Shaw, p. )
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Edward De Vere - Intro, Castiglione's Courtier:
For what more difficult, more noble, or more magnificent task has anyone ever undertaken than our author Castiglione, who has drawn for us the FIGURE and MODEL of a courtier, a work to which nothing can be added, in which there is no redundant word, a portrait which we shall recognize as that of a highest and most perfect type of man. And so, although NATURE herself has made nothing perfect in every detail, yet THE MANNERS OF MEN exceed in dignity that with which NATURE has endowed them; and he who surpasses others has here surpassed himself and has even out-done nature, which by no one has ever been surpassed.
For what more difficult, more noble, or more magnificent task has anyone ever undertaken than our author Castiglione, who has drawn for us the FIGURE and MODEL of a courtier, a work to which nothing can be added, in which there is no redundant word, a portrait which we shall recognize as that of a highest and most perfect type of man. And so, although NATURE herself has made nothing perfect in every detail, yet THE MANNERS OF MEN exceed in dignity that with which NATURE has endowed them; and he who surpasses others has here surpassed himself and has even out-done nature, which by no one has ever been surpassed.
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the sublime experience no longer points to an object beyond reason and expression, but rather to "that within representation which nonetheless exceeds the possibility of representation' (Milbank 2004: 212) - in The SublimePhilip Shaw, p.4
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Jonson's 1616 Folio and his play _The Alchemist_ bore
an epigraph adapted from Horace:
"Neque, me ut miretur turba, laboro: / Contentus paucis
lectoribus"
- " I do not expend my efforts so that the multitude may wonder at me: I am contented with a few readers"
- " I do not expend my efforts so that the multitude may wonder at me: I am contented with a few readers"
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Othello - destruction of Oxford's dignitas and immortal fame
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Jonson figured as suppressing 'Popular' Fame:
Cartwright, William, Jonsonus Virbius
...Blest life of Authors, unto whom we owe
Those that we have, and those that we want too:
Th'art all so good, that reading makes thee worse,
And to have writ so well's thine onely curse.
Secure then of thy merit, thou didst hate
That servile base dependance upon fate:
Successe thou ne'r thoughtst vertue, nor that fit,
Which chance, and TH'AGES FASHION DID MAKE HIT;
Excluding those from life in after-time,
Who into Po'try first brought luck and rime:
Who thought the peoples breath good ayre: sty'ld name
What was but noise; and getting Briefes for fame
Gathered the many's suffrages, and thence
Made commendation a benevolence:
THY thoughts were their owne Lawrell, and did win
That best applause of being crown'd within..
...Blest life of Authors, unto whom we owe
Those that we have, and those that we want too:
Th'art all so good, that reading makes thee worse,
And to have writ so well's thine onely curse.
Secure then of thy merit, thou didst hate
That servile base dependance upon fate:
Successe thou ne'r thoughtst vertue, nor that fit,
Which chance, and TH'AGES FASHION DID MAKE HIT;
Excluding those from life in after-time,
Who into Po'try first brought luck and rime:
Who thought the peoples breath good ayre: sty'ld name
What was but noise; and getting Briefes for fame
Gathered the many's suffrages, and thence
Made commendation a benevolence:
THY thoughts were their owne Lawrell, and did win
That best applause of being crown'd within..
*******************************
Jonson's 1616 Folio and his play _The Alchemist_ bore
an epigraph adapted from HORACE:
"Neque, me ut miretur turba, laboro: / Contentus paucis
lectoribus"
- " I do not expend my efforts so that the multitude may wonder at me: I am contented with a few readers"
- " I do not expend my efforts so that the multitude may wonder at me: I am contented with a few readers"
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Shaw, The Sublime
In a general sense, therefore, the sublime is beyond definition; we cannot point to a rule that will govern its regulation in the same way that we can with the rhetorical devices mentioned above. What we can do, however, is point to its effects:
For grandeur produces ecstasy rather than persuasion in the hearer; and the combination of wonder and astonishment always proves superior to the merely persuasive and pleasant. This is because persuasion is on the whole something we can control, whereas amazement and wonder exert invincible power and force and get the better of every hearer. Experience in invention and ability to order and arrange material cannot be detected in single passages; we begin to appreciate then only when we see the whole context. Sublimity, on the other hand, tears everything up like a whirlwind [or 'pulverizes all the facts like a thunderbolt'; and exhibits the orator's whole power at a single blow. (Longinus)
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1640, Timber, or Discoveries by Ben Jonson:
De Shakespeare nostrat. I remember, the Players have
often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his writing,
(whatsoever he penn'd) hee never blotted out line. My answer hath beene, would
he had blotted a thousand. Which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not
told posterity this, but for their ignorance, who choose that circumstance to
commend their friend by, wherein he most faulted. And to justifie mine owne
candor, (for I lov'd the man, and doe honour his memory (on this side Idolatry)
as much as any.) Hee was (indeed) honest, and of an open, and free nature: had
an excellent Phantsie; brave notions, and gentle expressions: wherein hee
flow'd with that facility, that sometime it was necessary he should be stop'd:
Sufflaminandus erat; as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his owne
power; would the rule of it had beene so too. Many times hee fell into those
things, could not escape laughter: As when hee said in the person of Cæsar, one
speaking to him; Cæsar thou dost me wrong. Hee replyed: Cæsar did never wrong,
but with just cause: and such like; which were ridiculous. But hee redeemed his
vices, with his vertues. There was ever more in him to be praysed, then to be
pardoned.
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Shaw, The Sublime, con't
Against the standard course of rhetorical instruction, which proceeds methodically and with due care to the entire range of the work, the thunderbolt of sublimity can emerge from a single phrase. What strikes andaudience with wonder (ekplexis) is more powerful than what merely persuades or pleases us. Unlike conventional public speech, therefore, the sublime is a discourse of domination; it seeks to ravish and intoxicate the audience so that a grand conception may be instilled in the mind without any bothersome appeal to reason or justice. As the eighteenth century critic Thomas Reid would go on to note, 'What [Longinus] calls sublime in description...carries the hearer along with it involuntarily, and by a kind of violence rahter than by cool conviction'(Ashfield and de Bolla 1996)
This description would suggest that the sublime is a product of NATURE rather than of ART. Yet, as Longinus insists, although 'nature is on the whole a law unto herself in matters of emotion and elevation, she is not a random force and does not work altogether without method'. Feelings, in other words, may arise in nature, but art is required to give them shape and coherence. The author goes on to describe a number of devices that may be employed to sublime effect, a list that includes hyperbole, preiphrasis (circumambulatory or round-about speaking) comparisons, similes, and metaphor. [see Jonson's 'sublime' encomium to 'sublime' Shakespeare - a tour de foarce]
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Peter Schwenger, Deceit in Appleton House
In Upon Appleton House, Marvell has taken advantage of the possible independence of ornament from subject matter to set up a conflict between the two that parallels the poem's explicit theme. Explicitly, he presents a conflict between the nature created by God and the the art created by man. Man's art is epitomized in the idea of the house, which fitly expresses man's ambitions toward and artificial world, this time ceated in his own image. But all art is suspect in this way, including the art of poetry itself. Poetry, like the house as it is characterized in Parthenieia Sacra, is "an artificious Plasme...made in spite of Nature, to vye with her." [Hawkins]. Appleton House is an exceptional house, praised because it is natural, plain, unassuming, and pure. But that praise is couched in a style that is the very opposite of these qualities: artificial, elaborate, overreaching, and curiously corrupt. Its corruption arrises from the nature of the ornamental metaphors of which it is wrought. Appleton House is praised for its perfect proportion; but an ambitious poet is encouraged to push his metaphors toward disproportion, since "the more unlike and unproportionable things be otherwise, THE MORE GRACE HATH THE METAPHOR." [Hobbes]. Each metaphor is, as Tesauro indicates, a sophisticated lie. And when applied to the natural subject, metaphors impose upon it a series of restless changes. They substitute bodiless FANCIES for the object itself, the poet's world for God's.
In Upon Appleton House, Marvell has taken advantage of the possible independence of ornament from subject matter to set up a conflict between the two that parallels the poem's explicit theme. Explicitly, he presents a conflict between the nature created by God and the the art created by man. Man's art is epitomized in the idea of the house, which fitly expresses man's ambitions toward and artificial world, this time ceated in his own image. But all art is suspect in this way, including the art of poetry itself. Poetry, like the house as it is characterized in Parthenieia Sacra, is "an artificious Plasme...made in spite of Nature, to vye with her." [Hawkins]. Appleton House is an exceptional house, praised because it is natural, plain, unassuming, and pure. But that praise is couched in a style that is the very opposite of these qualities: artificial, elaborate, overreaching, and curiously corrupt. Its corruption arrises from the nature of the ornamental metaphors of which it is wrought. Appleton House is praised for its perfect proportion; but an ambitious poet is encouraged to push his metaphors toward disproportion, since "the more unlike and unproportionable things be otherwise, THE MORE GRACE HATH THE METAPHOR." [Hobbes]. Each metaphor is, as Tesauro indicates, a sophisticated lie. And when applied to the natural subject, metaphors impose upon it a series of restless changes. They substitute bodiless FANCIES for the object itself, the poet's world for God's.
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Jonson, Cynthia's Revels
Amorphus. That's good, but how Pythagorical?
Phi. I, Amorphus. Why Pythagorical Breeches?
Amo. O most kindly of all, 'tis a conceit of that fortune,
I am bold to hug my Brain for.
Pha. How is't, exquisite Amorphus?
Amo. O, I am rapt with it, 'tis so fit, so proper,
so happy. --
Phi. Nay do not rack us thus?
Amo. I never truly relisht my self before.
Give me your Ears. Breeches Pythagorical, by reason of their trans-
migration into several shapes.
Mor. Most rare, in sweet troth.
Amorphus. That's good, but how Pythagorical?
Phi. I, Amorphus. Why Pythagorical Breeches?
Amo. O most kindly of all, 'tis a conceit of that fortune,
I am bold to hug my Brain for.
Pha. How is't, exquisite Amorphus?
Amo. O, I am rapt with it, 'tis so fit, so proper,
so happy. --
Phi. Nay do not rack us thus?
Amo. I never truly relisht my self before.
Give me your Ears. Breeches Pythagorical, by reason of their trans-
migration into several shapes.
Mor. Most rare, in sweet troth.
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Horace Of the Art of Poetry - transl. Ben Jonson
...Most writers, noble sire and either son,
Are, with the likeness of the truth, undone.
Myself for shortness labour, and I grow
Obscure. This, striving to run smooth,
and flow,
Hath neither soul nor sinews. Lofty he
Professing greatness, swells; that, low by lee,
Creeps on the ground; too safe, afraid of storm.
This seeking, in a various kind, to form
One thing PRODIGIOUSLY, paints in the woods
A dolphin, and a boar amid the floods.
So shunning faults to greater fault doth lead,
When in a WRONG AND ARTLESS WAY WE TREAD.
...Most writers, noble sire and either son,
Are, with the likeness of the truth, undone.
Myself for shortness labour, and I grow
Obscure. This, striving to run smooth,
and flow,
Hath neither soul nor sinews. Lofty he
Professing greatness, swells; that, low by lee,
Creeps on the ground; too safe, afraid of storm.
This seeking, in a various kind, to form
One thing PRODIGIOUSLY, paints in the woods
A dolphin, and a boar amid the floods.
So shunning faults to greater fault doth lead,
When in a WRONG AND ARTLESS WAY WE TREAD.
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Alciato's Book of Emblems
Emblem 69
Self-love
Because your figure pleased you too much, Narcissus, [or - because your beauty (forma) was excessively pleasing to you] it was changed
into a flower, a plant of known senselessness (stupor). Self-love is the
WITHERING (marcor) and destruction of natural power (ingenium) which brings and has
brought ruin to many learned men, who having thrown away the method of
the ancients seek new doctrines and pass on nothing but their own
fantasies (phantasia).
Emblem 69
Self-love
Because your figure pleased you too much, Narcissus, [or - because your beauty (forma) was excessively pleasing to you] it was changed
into a flower, a plant of known senselessness (stupor). Self-love is the
WITHERING (marcor) and destruction of natural power (ingenium) which brings and has
brought ruin to many learned men, who having thrown away the method of
the ancients seek new doctrines and pass on nothing but their own
fantasies (phantasia).
*********************************
Shaw, The Sublime, con't.
The emphasis on categorisation fails, however, to elide the fundamental sense in which the sublime escapes the grasp of its teacher; one can use hyperbole, for example, without inducing the sublime, and the same is true of all the devices Longinus cites. All that remains essential to the sublime is a state of feeling, which may be loosely described as wonder, awe, rapture, astonishment, ecstasy, or elevation, terms that rest uncomfortable with the increasingly functional nature of public speech (see Auerbach 1965), or, for that matter, with the protocols of didactic instruction.
It is in this latter respect that Longinus differs from his great Augustan precursor, the poet and critic HORACE (65-8 BCE). In his verse epistle Ars Poetica, Horace lays great store on the idea of ars as a 'practiced mastery of craft, as a systematic knowledge of theory and technique, and as a capacity for objective self-criticism' (Leitch 2001). For Horace, great thoughts and strong emotion must be subordinated to the RULES of decorum, to 'the discernment and use of appropriateness, propriety, proportion, and unity in the arts'. Whilst Longinus agrees with Horace on a number of points, for example on the use of imitation, he is critical of the idea that technical accomplishment should count for all.
Longinus' criticism of the Horatian or formalist approach to literature is directed mainly at his rival Caecilius, author of an earlier, as yet undiscovered, treatise on the sublime. Sublimity, according to Longinus' reading of Caecilius, is equated with rhetorical excellence. But whilst a 'faultless and pure writer' such as the orator Lysias may show more decorum that the philosopher Plato, the latter , for all his faults, is more inspired and thus more sublime (Longinus 1965) For Longinus, 'intensity' is greater than 'sobriety', 'living emotions' are higher than 'good breeding', 'speed...vehemence and power' compensate for lack of 'fluency, smoothness' and 'charm'. Thus the orator Demosthenes 'redeems all his mistakes many times over by a single sublime stroke'. Hyperides, Bacchylides, Lysias and Ion may be 'impeccable, uniformly beautiful writers', but for Longinus the electric shock of sublimity is all.
Rhetoric and Nobility
A wayward genius is thus preferable to a faultless pedant. But in privileging the expression of elemental human passions Longinus does not favour a return to aesthetic primitivism. His genius is not the wild-eyed, raving bard of Romantic imaginings, but a cultivated, noble, and urbane poet, aware of the distinction between the exhibition of raw, untutored feeling and the measured expression of weighty thoughts. Sublimity is thus 'the echo of a noble mind' and in many instances occurs 'apart from emotion' or even 'verbal expression'. [...]
Longinus' interest in the sublimity of the noble mind extends, then, even to the concealment of its slavish dependence on the materiality of words. 'A figure', he argues, 'is generally thought to be best when the fact that it is a figure is concealed'.
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Jonson, Cynthia's Revels
Cynthia: Dear Arete, and Crites, to you two
We give the Charge; impose what Pains you please:
TH' INCURABLE CUT OFF, the rest REFORM,
Remembring ever what we first decreed,
Since Revels were proclaim'd, let now none bleed.
Arete. How well Diana can distinguish Times,
And sort her Censures, keeping to her self
The Doom of Gods, leaving the rest to us?
Come, cite them, Crites, first, and then proceed.
(snip)
Then, Crites, practise thy DISCRETION.
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The word [discretion] was almost invariably used in Elizabethan England as a means of constructing social, cultural, or aesthetic difference. (David Hillman, Puttenham, Shakespeare, and the abuse of rhetoric).
Cynthia: Dear Arete, and Crites, to you two
We give the Charge; impose what Pains you please:
TH' INCURABLE CUT OFF, the rest REFORM,
Remembring ever what we first decreed,
Since Revels were proclaim'd, let now none bleed.
Arete. How well Diana can distinguish Times,
And sort her Censures, keeping to her self
The Doom of Gods, leaving the rest to us?
Come, cite them, Crites, first, and then proceed.
(snip)
Then, Crites, practise thy DISCRETION.
********************************
The word [discretion] was almost invariably used in Elizabethan England as a means of constructing social, cultural, or aesthetic difference. (David Hillman, Puttenham, Shakespeare, and the abuse of rhetoric).
********************************
The Furious Poet:
from Tom O'Bedlam
With a host of furious fancies
Whereof I am commander,
With a burning spear and a horse of air,
To the wilderness I wander.
By a knight of ghosts and shadows
I summoned am to tourney
Ten leagues beyond the wide world's end:
Methinks it is no journey.
Yet will I sing, Any food, any feeding,
Feeding, drink, or clothing;
Come dame or maid, be not afraid,
Poor Tom will injure nothing.
Whereof I am commander,
With a burning spear and a horse of air,
To the wilderness I wander.
By a knight of ghosts and shadows
I summoned am to tourney
Ten leagues beyond the wide world's end:
Methinks it is no journey.
Yet will I sing, Any food, any feeding,
Feeding, drink, or clothing;
Come dame or maid, be not afraid,
Poor Tom will injure nothing.
